Medicine
by uniform beautiful
Summary: Sokka and Zuko quietly deal with their feelings for each other in solitude, each with their own dark form of medicine. Rated T for now, please tell me if you think this should be rated M.
1. Medicine

A wee bit on the angsty side. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

* * *

**Medicine**

_"I am like a machine, all that I really need is medicine and then I'll fall fast asleep"--The Classic Crime_

Hate.

One of the strongest words in any vocabulary. One of the strongest of human emotions, even. Excluding love, its opposite.

But hate is probably stronger than love. It seems all negative emotions are stronger than their positive counterparts. Fear is stronger than bravery, sorrow deeper than joy, shame more crippling than pride.

And people doubt love's existence. But no one ever doubts hate. Hate, even on a slight scale, is fully apparent to the beholder. Love--and all its little layers of like and lust and passion--is hard to identify. Hard to sort out. Hate pierces through the thickest of emotional fogs. It boils up and seeps out around your pupils so anyone can see down into your depths and see how pained you are.

He knew hate well. He could prove that easier than he could prove gravity. Hate of that wretched girl. The way she slobbered all over him when they kissed, the way she always needed to grab his hand and feel rooted down to something. Her ugly, manly voice. Expressionless eyes. Why were they even together? He didn't even seem to like her. It was disgusting. Had she no modesty?

At first he thought that Mai's behavior was just annoying. Then it became infuriating, and at that point Sokka realized that it was because of Zuko. Had she been doing that with any other boy, Sokka realized he wouldn't have given a thought to her ostensible PDA. But the fact that it was Zuko she was all over pissed him off on a level he never thought possible. Was it jealousy? Envy paints a colorful picture.

He hadn't wanted to admit it, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts, but yes. He was jealous that Mai could kiss Zuko, and he couldn't.

Sokka's only comfort was in the world of mind-and-mood-altering substances. Whatever he could find he drank, swallowed, smoked, or snorted. Anything. They were his medicine. Then he drifted off to where his visions of Zuko were peaceful and wonderful. The essence of bliss. He'd lie there, his eyes drooping, his body seething with sparks of elecricity or rapids on a swiftly moving river. An agglomeration of fantastical sensations. Clouds of fire and smoke would linger in his veins throughout the day, making him sluggish and tired. But he was happy, always happy. So happy, and he hadn't been happy in a long time.

Slowly, he withdrew from his friends, becoming red around the eyes.

* * *

Their innocent puppy-love was sickening. Zuko watched them with a mild feeling of disgust bubbling in his stomach like acid. They were the perfect couple--the adorable couple everyone loved. The one that was everyone's friend. They didn't even fool around, or not that he saw--and he was glad he didn't--they just giggled with each other. Cute, adorable, lovable.

Sick.

Zuko thought Sokka could do better than her. She was alright in terms of appearance, and a pretty good fighter. Smart too. But an attractive boy like Sokka? Sokka, who was a brilliant inventor and strategist and funny as hell? Sokka, who could swing a sword better than anything Zuko had seen in a long time could only do as good as this chick from some noplace in the Earth Kingdom?

He wasn't sure when--but slowly Sokka's big blue eyes and slim, muscular body became a figure of beauty to Zuko. A muse, inspiring all manor of sinful fantasies. Sokka invented his own words, a lexicon of characters defining all his appetizing tributes; all his physical characteristics. Sokka made him a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a singer, a dancer. Whenever he was around, Zuko's thoughts went from placid to troubled. A storm of emotions, churning resentment and envy. All the things Sokka made him do, all the things he made him _want_ to do. It put him into a rage, his hurricane psyche spinning itself out and leaving behind the ruins of a civilization once prosperous. Charred remains after a volcanous eruption. The strong winds of Sokka would pick Zuko up and then drop him into a bottomless well of depression, leaving him to drown in his own melancholic waters.

And late at night, when no one was alive, he'd take a knife to him. His inner thigh--he was not foolish enough to do it where they'd see. And when his well was particularly empty, he'd heat it. The burning blade's carvings in his flesh were his medicine; the scar tissue was just a side-affect.

FAG

The rounded edges of the word were difficult to do in the dark with his shaky hand and pounding heart. Hot tears of shame would blind him, his temperature rising and falling like the tides. Slashes, gouges, long traces and stenciling, blood rising to the surface and breaking over; his body desperately trying to heal itself of the self-inflicted mutilation. He'd bite back the cries his stomach wanted him to make, muffled squeaks and stifled sobs--he was ever so quiet. No one would know. No one needed to know.


	2. Medicine's Machine

**Medicine's Machine**

"_I am like a machine, all that I really need is medicine and then I'll fall fast asleep. In my dream-like state I'll pretend I'm unscathed, but when I wake up my resilience fades"-The Classic Crime_

He walked with a limp now.

Zuko had always been a picture of health, except for his face. Now, other parts of him were scarred beyond repair. How much of his own flesh had he cut? Lots. He couldn't even remember what his naked body used to look like, because now it was just fucking disgusting. Mirrors were his enemies. He smashed them and used the shards to cut himself. Tiny fragments broke off from the glass as it gouged into his skin, intensifying the pain. He didn't understand.

He was afraid to undress now. His pale, pale skin highlighted every shade of red that latticed his thigh. There was the pale, pinkish-purple glow of old scars, healed over with a crust of new skin. The recent ones, some starting to grow rust-colored scabs. The soft bruising hovering under his skin from where his fingers clutched it too hard to pull it taut. The puffy burn marks, the ones that probably hurt the worst of all. Words and phrases and elaborately carved sentences overlapped each other and fought for space among the simple slashes. Eyes closed, he would run his hand over the bumpy surface.

It looked as if he'd been mauled by some clawed monster. Gruesome artwork healing in raised ridges and deep depressions like the bottom of the sea. It looked like it belonged in a hospital bed.

His eyes clouded over with shame as he touched the delicate wounds. His tender skin ached a reply, and that sick, disgusting part of him ached to add more.

Sometimes he wondered if it was even a depression thing anymore. It seemed almost spiritual now.

The scar tissue wasn't the only side-affect anymore. Each incision seemed to breed more shame. Each sound of searing flesh under heated steel seemed to numb him even more. His whole superficial body was shutting down; he couldn't even feel the pain. He had once thought it would heal over and be practically invisible. But now it was at the point of no return-he'd be colored with it for the rest of his life, just like the burn on his face. He no longer knew why he did it. He didn't even know his original inspiration, a boy he loved. That boy was practically dead.

* * *

He was useless now.

Sokka could barely run anymore. His perpetual high made him dizzy when he stood, made his muscles lax, and his whole face look aged. Even his hair-the glorious dark, thick hair that he shared with his whole family-was starting to fall out in small clumps. His whole body was confused: his skin looked grey and he was even thinner than before. Odd shapes had formed, bones jutted out, bags under his eyes. His skin hung on him in such a gruesome manner that he wanted to tear it right off. He was fucking insane, his once-intelligent mind had fled from the shape shifting monsters that the drugs made.

He didn't even know what half of the things he ingested were. Some gave him so much energy that he tore things apart and darted around and made loud noises and frothed at the mouth because he couldn't stop laughing. Others turned him into a slug. He would lie wherever he fell and stare at something for hours. And not move at all. Not even to breathe.

Whenever he woke he felt like shit. During the day he felt even worse. The evenings were the only time he could cope, and then it was ten minutes of happiness and three hours of recycling. The next day would be the same: he'd wake to violent vomiting, a horrible headache, and a failed attempt to remember what he did the night before.

There were the nights he couldn't sleep. There were the nights he passed out too quickly to savor his dosage. There were the nights when his organs would twist and churn with such fervor, saturated completely in an acidic solution, and he would writhe in pain. There were nights when his senses were heightened and he could see and feel and taste _everything_. And then there were the nights where he was so numbed and spacey that if the Earth were to crack apart and spit fire to the sky he would remain oblivious. His brain was being plucked out, spun left and right and up and down, and put in backwards for him to try to correct.

He felt like such a different person-not even the same species anymore, but something less human: a sponge that soaked up all the bile everyone else left behind-he knew that they knew. His eyes were dull and bloodshot, he was beyond on edge-he had already jumped off. And no longer could he smile.

Then one night, Sokka stared at the dying bag of powder in his trembling hand. Only one hit remained. What did this do again? Speed him up or slow him down or just make him really, really cold? When was the last time he ate?

_I think I'm going to die soon_, he thought to himself as he poured it out and put his nose to it.


End file.
